


The Heart's Promotion

by cascades (heartroots)



Category: Super Junior
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-01
Updated: 2011-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-07 16:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/433363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartroots/pseuds/cascades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Zhou Mi gets so caught up striving for perfection that he forgets it's unattainable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Heart's Promotion

**Author's Note:**

> This idea started out two months ago as fluff fic and mutated completely without my permission, but I went with it anyway. Inspired by Kyuhyun's oh-so-obviously smitten demeanor versus Zhou Mi's harder-to-pinpoint affections and a lyric by Jason Mraz that I may or may not have paraphrased in this fic (oddly enough, my last ~serious~ fic, hint: Kihae, was titled with half of the very same lyric). I tried very hard to avoid melodrama, but I don't know if I succeeded. NOT USED TO WRITING FIC THAT ISN'T CRACK, YOU SEE. You tell me?

It turns out that Kyuhyun liked Zhou Mi first; he and Zhou Mi compared dates. When you live like them, every day of your life just another tightly-packed space in your rigid schedule, all your important memories have dates attached. (Although Kyuhyun grumbled that it was nothing special when he announced his— he also remembers the date when Kibum pantsed Siwon; Zhou Mi laughed at the memory that isn’t his.) They compared, and there you have it. 

Kyuhyun liked (as in _liked_ liked) Zhou Mi long before Zhou Mi liked him. 

“But when did you realize you _loved_ me?” Zhou Mi teases. He regrets it the moment it leaves his lips. It’s been a very long day, he’s a little tipsy and a lot exhausted, and for a moment he forgot that they’ve never said that to each other before. He expects an awkward pause and a blatant subject change. He definitely doesn’t expect an answer. 

But he gets one. 

“A month after that,” Kyuhyun says. He looks down at the fraying edges of his t-shirt instead of at Zhou Mi. Zhou Mi thinks Kyuhyun might be blushing and he feels like he’s floating, for the most fleeting moment. “What about you?” 

“Oh. I…” Zhou Mi swallows nervously. He thinks back, and back, and back, and… nothing. His heart starts beating fast. He can’t remember. He’s sifting through dates in his mind, recalling pages of planners and digitized calendars because the answer has to be _there_ , in his scheduled past, _somewhere_. If it even exists. His stomach drops, heavy with empty dread. Kyuhyun is staring at him now, frowning. 

“I don’t remember,” Zhou Mi says. He tries for levity, nonchalant forgetfulness, but it comes out grave. 

“What?” 

“I… I don’t know. I mean, I can’t remember? Probably, uh. Around the same… time?” 

“What do you mean you don’t remember?” Kyuhyun asks. It sounds like he’s about to laugh. “The other day you said it was the anniversary of the first time I sucked you off.”

Zhou Mi clenches his jaw. 

“You remember _that_ and not…?” Kyuhyun’s expression becomes more difficult to decipher the longer Zhou Mi doesn’t try to refute him. “What? Was it not momentous to you?” 

There’s a long silence. 

“Can we just… forget I asked?” Zhou Mi says quietly. His voice wavers. 

Kyuhyun turns back to the television, jaw set and eyes hard. Zhou Mi can feel himself shaking. Shaking, and sinking. 

Zhou Mi knows Kyuhyun is upset, but he leaves him be as his heart continues to race and his mind whirls and he tries to compartmentalize all his memories with Kyuhyun, to when it went from fanservice to affection, from _like_ to _love_. Zhou Mi lets Kyuhyun pull away from him on the couch and trudge quietly to the bathroom to brush his teeth. It’s hours earlier than Kyuhyun usually goes to bed, but he mumbles something to Zhou Mi about being too tired to deal with his shit right now, come talk to me when you remember, and retreats to his room. Zhou Mi follows after him.

“Kui Xian wait, I didn’t—” Kyuhyun shuts the door in his face before he can finish. Probably a good thing; he had no idea how he was going to complete that sentence. 

He knocks. Kyuhyun ignores him. 

After a few minutes, Zhou Mi sighs and lowers his fist, turns away from the door and heads to the couch for the night. It’s too late for him to go home; he’d rather risk facing Kyuhyun’s questions in the morning if he can’t slip out before he wakes up than walk home alone in the city after dusk when he's this tired. And distressed.

A _good_ night’s sleep is elusive at best in the world of an idol. Normally he sleeps… all right. Just enough energy to keep him going for another day. But now he’s having trouble sleeping at all, and it isn’t only because the couch is lumpy with the indentations of a dozen different people. He doesn’t want to be awake anymore, but he supposes he deserves the waking guilt. 

He sleeps a little better after he rouses from an unsatisfying doze to find a pillow crammed near his head and a blanket draped over him, both from Kyuhyun’s bed. From Kyuhyun. The blanket’s not long enough to cover his ankles and the pillow smells like Kyuhyun and makes him miss him even more, but at least he knows Kyuhyun’s not so angry at him that he doesn’t care if he gets hypothermia or a crick in his neck. He manages to avoid a nervous breakdown and sleep the last few hours of the night through clinging to that small comfort.

\---

“Zhou Mi? What are you doing on the couch?” 

Through bleary eyes, Zhou Mi catches sight of Ryeowook hovering over him. He groans groggily and stretches his long limbs; the blanket slips halfway off of him onto the floor. He blinks and tries to remember… what exactly he is doing on the couch. With Kyuhyun’s blanket. 

Kyuhyun. _Shit_. That’s why he’s on the couch. “I was… going to stay in Kyuhyun’s room, but he just, um. Needed his space,” Zhou Mi says politely, trying to ease the concerned furrow out of Ryeowook’s brow. Contrary to his intentions, the furrow intensifies. “Excuse me, but I need a shower. And maybe a massage to work out the kinks in my back. That couch is brutal,” he laughs weakly; Ryeowook doesn’t laugh with him. Instead he cocks his head to the side, suspicious. “Tell Kyuhyun I’ll call him later. Okay?” 

Ryeowook looks like he wants to question Zhou Mi further, but instead he smiles, a little uneasily, and goes to the kitchen to make his breakfast. Zhou Mi wonders what the hell is happening to his previously uncomplicated (well, relatively) life as he folds up the blanket and sets it on the couch, the pillow resting squarely on top. 

With a last goodbye to Ryeowook, he slips on his shoes and his coat and heads back to his dorm. 

Henry is still asleep when he gets there. It’s early yet, the red traces of the recent sunrise still present in the pink-tinged clouds on the horizon (he kept his eyes on the sky instead of the cracked sidewalk as he walked home). Zhou Mi doesn’t disturb Henry. His alarm is on; he’ll wake up when he needs to. _At least someone is getting some sleep_ , he thinks, a little jealous as he listens to Henry’s soft snores. 

Zhou Mi kicks off his shoes and shrugs off his coat and shirt on the way to the bathroom. He has to adjust the knob four times before the shower is just the right temperature, hot enough so the steam rises up all around him and cleanses the grimy feeling of not sleeping in the right place, but not so hot it scalds. He scrubs too much shampoo through his hair, flattened by a fitful sleep, and rinses and repeats until the strands squeak between his fingers. It’s mindless and just soothing enough to keep him from drawing back the curtain and stumbling to the toilet so he can throw up. It’d be less pathetic if he actually had a hangover. 

Somehow being clean makes everything seem a little less bleak. He steps out of the shower, wraps a towel around his waist, and wipes a swathe of the fogged up mirror clean with the palm of his hand. _Breathe_ , he tells his fresh-faced reflection. Now is the time to level-headedly assess the situation. 

“Kyuhyun fell in love with me two years ago,” he quietly says to himself. Hopefully Henry is still asleep. Even if he isn’t, Zhou Mi still needs to say this out loud. “He remembers the exact date. I hurt him because I don't. He didn’t say it, but I know I did.” He lets out a shaky breath as he watches his reflection blink back tears. He decides to brush his teeth to stop himself from getting overly-emotional; how can you cry when you’re brushing your teeth? “I don’t remember falling in love with Kyuhyun. I… I don’t know if I love Kyuhyun.” Okay. It’s actually much worse when he says it out loud, even when it’s muffled by a toothbrush. “Do I love Kyuhyun?” 

It turns out you can cry when you’re brushing your teeth. You just look awfully silly.

\---

The first time Zhou Mi met Kyuhyun he had bleach blond hair and had just narrowly escaped an untimely death. Back then, Zhou Mi was still a trainee fumbling with the language and Kyuhyun was a newly-loved idol (most antis with a shred of human decency disappear when their death wishes almost come true) on the very cusp of superstardom. They knew each other’s names and faces, but didn’t have time to learn much else. Kyuhyun was just another sunbae Zhou Mi passed in the halls of the SM Entertainment building, bowed to with the utmost respect and silently swore to prove himself to one day. 

Months later, promotions for Don’t Don would be over and Henry, and then he, would be revealed as members of Super Junior M. But not members of _Super Junior_ ; management made that very clear. Zhou Mi didn’t consider himself and Kyuhyun band mates until one inauspicious night when Kyuhyun found him wallowing in self-pity in a deserted bathroom at 2 o’clock in the morning. 

Not one of Zhou Mi’s proudest moments. 

He’d locked himself in a stall, just in case anyone walked in, and was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet fighting back tears. He was about to crawl under the partition in search of more toilet paper to wipe his nose with (of course he chose the stall with a nearly-empty roll) when the door to the bathroom opened. Zhou Mi froze. Steps came closer until he could see shoes from under the door. The owner of those shoes knocked on the door of Zhou Mi’s stall. 

“You okay in there?” 

Kyuhyun. He must have seen Zhou Mi leave the practice room. Zhou Mi cleared his throat. “I’m fine.”

There was a pause. Kyuhyun shuffled his feet. “You ran out of there pretty quickly.” 

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t feeling well.” That’s true enough. No one thing triggered the overwhelming feeling of _not being wanted_. It was a lot of things, and it was no one’s fault. The chanting from the streets invaded his mind and waited, waited, waited for the most inopportune moment to suddenly amplify until he could barely hear the music over the noise. Running away felt like his only choice. The farther he got from their debut song, the quieter the chanting in his head got. But the feelings didn’t fade with the volume. 

“Were you crying?”

Zhou Mi chose not to answer that. Instead, he said, “Would you mind getting me some toilet paper from the next stall over?” 

“Yes. I would mind. Come out of there and get it yourself.” 

Zhou Mi took a few deep breaths before he ventured out of the stall and took the real tissues Kyuhyun offered with a grateful smile. Kyuhyun watched him closely. Zhou Mi didn’t know him well enough to be able to place the emotion behind his expression. Concern? Pity? Empathy? “You must think I’m pathetic,” he said as he dabbed at his eyes. 

Kyuhyun shrugged. “Everyone in Super Junior has had a breakdown in a bathroom at some point in their career. Comes with the territory. Well, except me, of course.” 

_Everyone in Super Junior._ Zhou Mi almost welcomed the tears that came next. “Of course,” he laughed weakly. “Thank you, Kyuhyun-shii.” 

Kyuhyun smiled with just his lips and patted Zhou Mi on the shoulder. Zhou Mi hadn’t realized he was cold until he felt the warmth of Kyuhyun’s palm through his thin shirt. “Hankyung-hyung decided it was about time to wrap up for the night. We’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow. Same time.”

Zhou Mi wanted to ask if it was his fault they ended early, if they were mad at him or disappointed with him, but Kyuhyun seemed to sense Zhou Mi’s worries and firmly cut him off before he could say a word. 

“They’re all getting some sleep now. You should too.” 

Zhou Mi nodded. “I will. Thank you again.” Then, ignoring his misgivings, he pulled Kyuhyun into a one-armed hug. Kyuhyun didn’t hug back, but he didn’t pull away either. He patted Zhou Mi’s back and handed him another tissue, and they walked back to their rooms together in a silence that hadn’t been comfortable before.

\---

Henry is up when Zhou Mi composes himself enough to leave the bathroom. Zhou Mi tries to tip-toe past him eating cereal at the kitchen table, but Henry is too sharp for that. 

“You okay?” 

Zhou Mi sighs and turns to look at Henry. “You heard me, didn’t you?” 

Henry nods. He puts his spoon down and beckons Zhou Mi into the kitchen, pointing to the chair opposite him. 

Zhou Mi sits. For a few seconds he stays perfectly still, posture immaculate, face expressionless, but Henry’s eyes are so warm and his smile so sympathetic that Zhou Mi can’t hide from him. He gives up the act and slumps forward onto the table, damp hair falling over the balled up fist he has pressed to his forehead. It’s throbbing with the effort of holding his worries inside. “I’m so stupid," he groans.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” 

“I thought you heard me.”

“I just heard you crying,” Henry says softly. He places a comforting hand over Zhou Mi’s. 

Zhou Mi presses his forehead against the cool tabletop and breathes out slowly. Henry squeezes his hand. Zhou Mi sits back up straight and takes another deep breath, and Henry lets him pull his hand away to comb the hair out of his eyes. “Kyuhyun told me he loved me. I couldn’t say it back.” 

Henry doesn’t do a good job of hiding his surprise. “ _You_ couldn’t— but… why not?” 

“Because I don’t know if I love him.” 

“Zhou Mi.” Zhou Mi can’t tell if Henry looks like he wants to hit him or hug him. “Everyone knows you love Kyuhyun. What’s this all about?”

Zhou Mi makes a frustrated noise. “I don’t know. Isn’t love supposed to feel, like…?” Zhou Mi trails off, gesturing to try and convey what he can’t express with words. Henry stares blankly at him. “How is what I feel for Kyuhyun any different than what I feel for you?” 

Henry makes a face. “We’re not having sex?”

“But you can have sex with someone and not,” Zhou Mi huffs out a breath, “… _feel_ anything. That can’t be the difference if there’s no emotion inherently attached. So… what’s the difference?” 

Henry looks at him hard. “I think it’s just something you have to decide for yourself.” 

“But—”

“Maybe you should ask Kyuhyun. See what he feels.” 

Zhou Mi sighs, frustrated tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “Yeah. Maybe.” He stands up and pushes his chair in. It scrapes against the floor. “I’ve got to get going or I’ll be late for filming.” 

“Mi.”

Zhou Mi doesn’t turn back to look at Henry, but he pauses on his way out the door. (Hair not done, no makeup on his face, shirt wrinkled; his stylists are going to be dumbfounded. And angry, when they realize how much longer it’s going to take to get the dark circles to disappear from under his eyes than usual.) 

“Don’t let this ruin everything. You’re not the type to blow things out of proportion.”

Zhou Mi nods, though Henry probably can’t see it. He walks out without saying goodbye.

\---

His stylists aren’t as furious as he thought they’d be, although they do _tsk_ and fuss and scold him for not getting enough rest. He nods and apologizes automatically, gratefully, as if they’re offering advice he hasn’t heard a thousand times before. If they see anything deeper than sleep deprivation in the circles under his eyes, they don’t say so. 

The shooting of the first segment goes well, although Chen Lan has to take on some extra smiles to make up for Zhou Mi’s lack. No one calls him out on the fact that the smiles he does manage are not nearly as wide and bright as usual; either they don’t notice or they just don’t care. When they wrap up the first location and the director tells them to take five, Zhou Mi plops down on an empty bench and drains an entire bottle of water. It’s possible his pounding headache is from dehydration. 

“You look tired,” Chen Lan says as she sits down beside him. 

“I’ve heard.”

Her eyes widen slightly at his sharp reply. “Zhou Mi?” she inquires with a touch to his shoulder.   
Zhou Mi sighs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to be short with you. I’m just—” 

His phone vibrates in his pocket. He knows it’s Kyuhyun before he even looks. A text. He ignores it, puts his phone on silent, and stuffs it back in his pocket. If the message is anything along the lines of an ominous, “We need to talk,”, then Zhou Mi can’t deal with it right now. Crying and ruining his makeup right before the cameras start rolling would not be very professional. 

“Did something happen with you and Kyuhyun?” Chen Lan quietly asks. 

Zhou Mi panics until he remembers she doesn’t know he and Kyuhyun are dating. If she suspects, she’s never said anything. She simply saw Kyuhyun’s name and the expression on Zhou Mi’s face when he saw Kyuhyun’s name; it wouldn’t be hard to put those twos together and come up with four. Zhou Mi lets out a steadying breath. “He’s angry with me.”

She gives him a considering look. “Does he have good reason to be angry?” 

“Yes,” he answers honestly. 

“Oh, Zhou Mi,” she says, placing a comforting hand on his knee. “You’ll be friends again in no time. You two are always having little squabbles, aren’t you?” 

_Nothing this big_ , Zhou Mi thinks, but he doesn’t want to burden Chen Lan. Or keep this conversation going for much longer. So he smiles, as genuinely as he can and says, “Yes. I’m sure you’re right. Thank you.”

The director announces that they’re leaving for the next location. Zhou Mi promises Chen Lan they’ll talk more about her and less about him the next time they get a break; she laughs and says it’s no bother, her life isn’t nearly as exciting as his, and they climb back into the van and drive off to… Zhou Mi forgets where. He stares out the window on the way there, fingering the outline of his phone in his pocket and telling himself over and over and over not to look. Not yet. 

There’s one more location after that, and then they’re done. Zhou Mi suspects he lost his handle on mimicking cheer towards the end of the shoot because Chen Lan keeps frowning at him, concerned, as they pack up for the day. Zhou Mi lets her give him a hug, but he won’t say anything more about the situation with Kyuhyun. He feels bad for keeping her in the dark when she so clearly wants to help, but this is too big for a friendship like theirs. So he just waves goodbye to her and hopes this will be resolved the next time they see each other. 

He has two more texts and one missed call. All from Kyuhyun. The responsible thing would be to read the messages, call Kyuhyun back, and find out what he feels. Like Henry told him to. 

Zhou Mi turns his phone off and walks home.

\---

Zhou Mi has never been in love. Not anything that he considers love, anyway. 

He’s been in relationships. Several of them. It’s not like he was a virgin before he met Kyuhyun. He had a couple of girlfriends when he was very young, but that was before he realized girls didn’t quite fit with him. He started looking at boys instead and found he liked what he saw, and that was that. No crisis of sexuality, per se, just a casual changing of targets that his parents never had to know about. In college he had a few flings with guys and confirmed that yes, physically, that’s what he’d been missing all along. He remembers all their names, given and family, but can’t quite recall their faces. 

When his career started to take off, his sex life came to a sharp halt. 

And then he met Kyuhyun. 

There are a million— no, _millions_ of people all over the world who would do absolutely anything to have Kyuhyun. Zhou Mi often wonders what odds he beat to get him. 

For months, he had no idea Kyuhyun even liked men. He’d talked about kissing girls in his past and had never warmed up to the more overtly sexual fanservice he had to perform with his bandmates; Zhou Mi assumed that meant he was straight. But the first time he kissed Kyuhyun (after a concert where the fans had finally cheered, not chanted, when he stepped out on stage for his solo; when he was so overflowing with joy and lingering adrenaline and gratitude that when Kyuhyun congratulated him, he took that as an invitation to stick his tongue down his throat), Kyuhyun kissed back and unzipped his pants and got down on his knees for him. There was no denying that evidence. 

It was the best first kiss Zhou Mi’s ever had, and not (only) because he got an orgasm so soon after. There was something different about it. 

Maybe that’s what your first real relationship feels like— like all you’ve done before was insignificant and you shake your head at your past self for being so young, so foolish, for not seeing what you see now. What he saw then, but isn’t quite so sure about anymore. 

Everything that happened after that one-sided hug with Kyuhyun in a deserted SM Entertaiment bathroom somehow led to Kyuhyun kissing him in a hotel room far from home with the taste of Zhou Mi’s come in the back of his mouth, but Zhou Mi’s never figured out how. It probably makes more sense from Kyuhyun’s point of view because he was the one falling in love. And Zhou Mi was… what? Having a fling? Using him? He should have questioned the meaning of their relationship before he let it get so far, but kissing Kyuhyun in empty dressing rooms and holding his hand under tables and falling asleep on his shoulder on the plane rides between his two homes felt too good to risk messing up by trying to qualify it all. Stick it in a box and call it love and wait until the pressure of that name brings it to a catastrophic end. 

Zhou Mi believes in love, but that doesn’t make it real.

\---

“Kyuhyun called me,” Henry announces as soon as he gets home from picking up their dinner. 

Zhou Mi’s stomach flips. Henry doesn’t push him to talk right away, although Zhou Mi can tell he wants an explanation. He turns the TV off and helps Henry set the bags of takeout on the table. Henry waits, staring expectantly at Zhou Mi as he begins eating. “What’d he say?” Zhou Mi finally asks when Henry’s chewing loudly enough to drown out the wobbly cadence of Zhou Mi’s voice. 

“That you were ignoring his calls,” Henry answers, mouth half full. He looks pointedly at Zhou Mi. 

Zhou Mi toys with the food on his plate. He’s not very hungry, despite the fact that he hasn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon. “I couldn’t call him. I couldn’t even bring myself to read the texts he sent me.”

“You can’t just ignore him forever.” 

“I don’t want to ignore him _forever_ , just long enough for him to forget what I said.” 

Henry is silent for a moment, an odd look on his face. “Aren’t you at least happy he loves you?”

Zhou Mi’s frown lessens, even reversing itself until it’s the barest hint of a smile. “Yeah,” he says softly. “I know what you’re going to say. I should make him happy like that too. But what if it turns out I’m… lying to him? And I just don’t know it yet because I _think_ I’m in love, but I’m not? I can’t do that to him.”

Henry stares at him, expression incomprehensible. “You need to shut your fucking brain off,” he concludes. 

Zhou Mi shrugs. He can’t argue with that. 

He doesn’t eat more than two bites of his dinner and goes to bed without showering. He sleeps even worse than the night before, which is to say he doesn’t sleep at all. Just stares at Kyuhyun’s name in his phone and thinks about ways to make himself stop thinking.

\---

Henry’s gone when Zhou Mi finally emerges from his room the next day. The solitude is more bitter than sweet.

He spends the day in a fog, moving back and forth from his computer to the television to his iPod to the bookshelf in an effort to distract himself. Nothing works. Kyuhyun follows him everywhere he goes. About an hour before Henry’s due home from practicing with Donghae, Zhou Mi texts Kyuhyun.

> _i don’t know what im doing._

> _You’re being a fucking asshole._

> _i do know that._

> _When you figure out how to get your idiotic head out of your ass, call me._

> _i promise i will._

> _It better be soon. Or it’s over._

Zhou Mi’s thumbs hover over the keys until his vision is so blurry with tears he can’t tell the letters apart. _Over?_

Henry finds him on the couch fighting back sobs when he comes home. He puts a strong arm around him and silently passes him tissue after tissue, his presence soothing enough without any trite reassurances. He doesn’t say anything until Zhou Mi stops crying. “It’s not over yet. You still have a chance to fix things. Just… don’t fuck this up, Zhou Mi.” 

Zhou Mi nods weakly. He’s so exhausted he feels like he could fall asleep right here on Henry’s shoulder. At least he knows sleep will come to him tonight. “Tomorrow. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

\---

“Hi.” 

“Took you long enough.” 

Zhou Mi swallows and grips his phone tighter. “I know. I’m an idiot.” 

Henry left early that morning to spend the day at the studio with Peter, Chance, and Young Sky. He left a note on the table that said, _Do it. It’ll only get worse if you do nothing._

“Yeah, you are. I don’t know why I even… whatever,” Kyuhyun finishes gruffly. “Give me one reason why I should stay on the phone with you.” 

“I thought you wanted me to call you?” 

“Only if you’re going to say something worthwhile.” 

“I’m trying, Kyuhyun. Please.” 

“I realized something when you were ignoring my calls,” Kyuhyun says conversationally. “There are two possible explanations for your freak out. Either you can’t remember because you forgot,” Kyuhyun pauses, waiting for Zhou Mi to butt in and say yes, that’s it, I apologize, please forgive me for being a forgetful moron, “in which case, honestly this seems like an overreaction to me. Or you can’t remember because… it never happened.” 

Zhou Mi feels sick. Dizzy. Like he just got punched right between the lungs. 

“Tell me right now or I’m hanging up.” 

“Kyuhyun, I—” Zhou Mi tries, his throat tight with the threat of tears to come. 

“That’s it, isn’t it? All this time and you never— fuck you,” Kyuhyun spits, his control splintering. “I can’t believe you. I love you. There, I really said it this time. Not an implication, the actual words. Now say it back. Say it back, please.” Kyuhyun’s voice breaks. “Please, Mi. Just say it."

Zhou Mi bites his lip to hold back a sob. “I… I don’t think I can.” 

“Why?” Kyuhyun yells. Zhou Mi winces at the volume of his voice. “Are you sleeping with someone else?” 

Zhou Mi nearly drops his phone out of shock. “No! Kyuhyun, _no_. I’d never do that!” 

“Then why can’t you say it?” Zhou Mi suspects that Kyuhyun’s crying, those silent tears of his that only turn into sobs when he’s too upset to remember how to breathe. Zhou Mi would start crying harder purely out of sympathy if he wasn’t running out of tissues. The worst part is that it’s his fault Kyuhyun’s crying. Ripping his heart out would probably hurt less than this. 

“I don’t know,” Zhou Mi whispers. “I don’t know, Kyuhyun.” 

For a moment it sounds like the connection is going fuzzy, but it’s just Kyuhyun blowing his nose. 

“Come over,” Kyuhyun says after a long pause. “I can’t do this over the phone.” And then he hangs up. 

Zhou Mi feels nauseous again; unsteady, like he’s out at sea and still wobbling along on his land legs. He ends the call and stuffs his phone in his pocket. It’s a futile effort to try and make himself look presentable after the half-a-week he’s had, but he trudges to the bathroom anyway to splash his face with icy water, comb damp fingers through his hair, and blow his nose, after resolving he won’t cry again on the way there. 

He’d tuck some tissues in his back pocket just in case, but he can’t find any left in the apartment.

\---

Zhou Mi looks even worse by the time he gets to the building. The cold wind and drizzling rain made sure of that. He was hoping the dorms would be empty save Kyuhyun, but no luck. Sungmin is there sitting on the couch. The same couch Zhou Mi slept on three nights prior. He finds himself blanking on how to greet him; he’s not sure how much Kyuhyun told him. “Hi?” he tries. 

“You look awful,” Sungmin observes. 

Zhou Mi runs a hand through his hair. It only makes it worse. He sighs. “I know.” 

Sungmin kicks his feet up off of the coffee table and leans forward, eyes trained unblinkingly on Zhou Mi. “Okay. This is how it is, Zhou Mi. You’re my friend. But Kyuhyun and I have been friends for much, much longer. I owe my loyalty to him. So if you hurt him anymore than you already have, I’m _not_ going to be happy with you.” 

Zhou Mi meets Sungmin’s hard eyes and nods. “I understand.” 

“Fix it, okay?” Sungmin adds, his demeanor softening. “I don’t want to have to be obligated to act like I hate you.” 

Zhou Mi nods again, and Sungmin wishes him luck and retreats to his own room. Zhou Mi takes a deep breath. He knocks on Kyuhyun’s door. 

The first thing Zhou Mi notices when Kyuhyun opens the door is how obvious it is that he’s been crying. His eyes are red-rimmed and he keeps sniffing, though there are no lingering tears. He doesn’t like to cry in front of people. Zhou Mi isn’t sure if he’s allowed to hold him right now, so he stands on the other side of the room while Kyuhyun leans against his desk, neither willing to break the silence just yet. His arms dangle awkwardly at his sides and he can’t stop shuffling his feet. His eyes are wet. 

“I’m sorry,” Zhou Mi blurts when he can’t take the quiet any longer. 

“What are you apologizing for?” Kyuhyun asks. His eyes are fixed on his bare toes. “You don’t love me. Not your fault.” 

That was designed to hurt, and it does. It sticks in his heart like a barb. “Kui Xian.”

"Don't call me that."

"Kyuhyun," Zhou Mi amends, wounded heart in his throat, " _Please._ "

“Please _what_ , Zhou Mi? Please disregard the fact that we’ve been sleeping together for months— no, scratch that, over a _year_ , and I apparently mean nothing to you?” 

“That’s not true! Kyuhyun, that’s— I… I’m sorry.” And he’s crying again, his throat too tight to speak. He scrubs a hand through his unclean hair, attempting to get his emotions under control. Asking for tissues seems a little presumptuous. 

Kyuhyun pushes off his desk and starts walking towards the door. Zhou Mi doesn’t know if he’s opening it to usher Zhou Mi out, leaving himself, or calling for Sungmin to come kick Zhou Mi’s ass, but he stops him with a hand on his arm regardless. 

“Kyuhyun.” Zhou Mi doesn’t dare look anywhere but into Kyuhyun’s eyes. They’re wide and dark and even redder around the edges up close. The tension between them intensifies as Zhou Mi’s fingers tighten around Kyuhyun’s wrist. It’s the first time they’ve touched in three days. For a moment they’re perfectly still, and then the tension cracks like a bolt of lightning and Zhou Mi drags Kyuhyun closer and Kyuhyun tugs Zhou Mi down with a hand fisted in his day old shirt, and they kiss like it’s been three _weeks_ since they’ve touched, not days. Everything comes naturally after that, as simple and vital to them as breathing. Maybe now, when they’re three words away from falling apart, isn’t a good time, but there’s nothing Zhou Mi would rather be doing at this moment than burying his trembling fingers in Kyuhyun’s hair and kissing him breathless. 

Kyuhyun reaches up with the sleeve of his sweatshirt to gently wipe away the tears still clinging to Zhou Mi’s cheek. He takes Zhou Mi’s jaw in his hand and presses their lips even more firmly together, shoves his tongue in Zhou Mi’s mouth until Zhou Mi shoves back and tilts Kyuhyun’s head to kiss him even deeper. 

Zhou Mi was terrified he’d lose this, this breath-stealing tangle of lips and limbs and heartbeats, and maybe he still will, but it’s his now. For now, Kyuhyun is still his. 

Zhou Mi flicks Kyuhyun’s loose sweatshirt off of one shoulder. Kyuhyun shrugs it off and lets it drop to the floor and in a matter of seconds the rest of their clothes follow, tossed aside in a haphazard trail leading to Kyuhyun’s bed. Kyuhyun winds up flat on his back near the center of the mattress, Zhou Mi pinning him down to press open-mouthed kisses along the line of his sternum, down his stomach, up one hip and down the other as he grips Kyuhyun’s thighs tight enough to leave fingertip-shaped bruises. 

“Is this makeup sex or breakup sex?” Zhou Mi asks. He feels he has a right to know. He’s already breathing unevenly as he reaches up to retrieve the bottle that’s always in the top drawer of Kyuhyun’s nightstand. 

“I don’t care. I— I need you,” Kyuhyun says, his voice faltering; he tugs Zhou Mi into a fierce kiss to cover the moment of frailty. “Just fuck me. Worry about what it means later.” 

Zhou Mi wants to argue that it’s important enough to worry about _now_ , but Kyuhyun arches beneath him and Zhou Mi bites back his concerns, giving a tight nod in response. Touching Kyuhyun again is enough to make him not want to think about what it means. So he stops thinking. He slides slick fingers into Kyuhyun and kisses him to stifle his moans, taking it slow until Kyuhyun’s fingernails break the skin on Zhou Mi’s back, urging him on. Zhou Mi wraps Kyuhyun’s legs around his waist and Kyuhyun holds fast, locking his ankles over the small of Zhou Mi’s back. He digs his heels in and gasps when Zhou Mi thrusts into him, eyes flying open wide; Zhou Mi can see teardrops clinging to his eyelashes. He presses light fingertips to Kyuhyun’s temple, traces his cheek and the line of his jaw and watches him blink back the tears he wouldn’t let Zhou Mi see before.

“Do you want to stop?” Zhou Mi whispers. A lump is forming in his throat at the sight of Kyuhyun so vulnerable. 

“No,” Kyuhyun says with a firm shake of his head, and he forcibly moves Zhou Mi’s hips down against his with a squeeze of his legs. “Don’t you dare.” 

Zhou Mi tangles his fingers in Kyuhyun’s hair and meets his lips in a desperate, open-mouthed kiss as he starts moving again, deep inside Kyuhyun. Breathing heavily, one hand clutched tight to Kyuhyun’s waist, he whispers, "Kui Xian," and Kyuhyun doesn't try to correct him, so he says it again and again. Kyuhyun’s fingernails scrape his back when Zhou Mi hits him just right, drawing a sharp line down the arch of his spine. Zhou Mi wishes Kyuhyun would open his eyes, but he settles for eyes shut tight, long lashes fanning out over flushed cheeks. Kyuhyun is so beautiful, so beautiful like this, whispering _oh_ s and _fuck_ s and _please_ s as he moves in sync with Zhou Mi, arching up until Zhou Mi can fold him into his arms.

Kyuhyun breathes Zhou Mi's name seconds before his orgasm overwhelms him, lips just barely brushing the skin of Zhou Mi's neck. Zhou Mi tumbles over the edge not long after. He shudders and collapses on top of Kyuhyun, chest to heaving chest, face buried in his neck, both of their hearts beating hard. 

In his dazed state, Zhou Mi wonders if he'll ever be able to be happy again without Kyuhyun this close to him.

“You’re holding me like you think I’m going to disappear,” Kyuhyun says once their breathing has evened out. He looks up at Zhou Mi through lowered lashes.

Zhou Mi reluctantly loosens his grip. “I’m afraid you are.” 

Kyuhyun doesn't say anything. He closes his eyes.

All the emotions Zhou Mi had pushed aside rush back as the post-orgasm bliss ebbs. He rolls off of Kyuhyun and sits on the edge of the bed, head in his hands. It's silent for a few moments but for their breathing. Then the mattress shifts and creaks and Zhou Mi feels Kyuhyun's hand on his shoulder. Their eyes meet. Kyuhyun lies stomach down with his head at the foot of the bed, his favorite position to think in, and beckons Zhou Mi to lie beside him. Only their shoulders touch, but Zhou Mi is glad for even the barest amount of contact at this point.

“What does it feel like?” Zhou Mi asks. Kyuhyun tilts his head towards Zhou Mi in question. Zhou Mi clarifies, “Being in love?” 

“Like….” Kyuhyun smoothes the wrinkled sheets beneath his cheek. “Like I want to be around you all the time, I guess.”

“What else?” 

Kyuhyun lets out a short breath. “I don’t know. It just feels right. Not perfect or anything — just right. And… when I think about tomorrow, or a month from now, or years down the line, after Super Junior, you’re still there. In my mind.” 

Zhou Mi is heartened by Kyuhyun's use of the present tense, but it still takes him a moment to process his words. “Isn’t there more to it than that?” 

Kyuhyun laughs. “Zhou Mi. Don’t you always say you should look at things simply?” 

“It’s as simple as that?” 

“It is for me.” Kyuhyun half-smiles and rests his head on Zhou Mi’s shoulder. Zhou Mi leans instinctively into him. He brushes stray strands of sweaty hair off of Kyuhyun’s pale forehead and ignores the voice in the back of his head that likes to list all the reasons why he and Kyuhyun might break up, and how they might even break up Super Junior in the process. The same voice that urges him to dwell on the complications rather than on the simple joy of entwining his fingers with Kyuhyun’s and kissing the corner of his mouth to feel the edges of his fragile smile. 

Maybe it is that simple, him and Kyuhyun. And maybe he doesn’t have to know exactly what love is to feel it. Something flutters in Zhou Mi's chest. “I… think I do love you then.” 

Kyuhyun makes a sound that Zhou Mi doesn't know how to describe. Disbelieving, relieved, astonished, exasperated beyond belief, even a little amused. “ _Why?_ Why do I love an idiot like you? Explain that to me, please.” Kyuhyun laughs shakily, tears shining in the corners of his eyes, as he pulls Zhou Mi into a crushing hug. “Was that so hard, idiot?” he whispers.

Zhou Mi bites his lip. “I love you,” he says. He pauses deliberately after. “... No, I guess not.”

Kyuhyun punches him hard in the arm; Zhou Mi winches. “God, shut up. You're such an asshole,” he mutters as he hugs Zhou Mi even tighter than before. Hard enough to hurt, but Zhou Mi doesn't mind. “I'm still mad at you. For at least a month.”

 _I love Kyuhyun_ , Zhou Mi thinks, and everything falls into place.


End file.
